


The Evening Triumvirate

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Female Tony, Female Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 18:57:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13887084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: Rumour is scarier than any propaganda. And the rumour of the Evening Triumvirate scares more than just HYDRA's enemies - the truth of their little Asset scares HYDRA's leaders, too.





	1. The Fist, Our Winter Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> Similar to The Midnight Engineer, but reworked for some extra drama I thought up after I'd finished that fic already.

He didn't remember the Alps. He didn't remember the fall. He didn't remember the blonde man the one scientist kept asking about. He knew about the war, but only that they had found him there. He didn't think he really wanted to know more. It didn't sound like somewhere he wanted to be.

"No need to be afraid, Soldier." The scientist would smile, aiming for reassuring and failing. "There is a greater purpose for you."

He thought it might mean they would stop hurting him, but that was not it. That wasn't what they had planned. That was not what he was meant for.

* * *

The Fist, Pierce called him.

He would sit in his isolation room, staring ahead with nothing on his mind and emptiness in his eyes. For decades, they had cultivated him, broken away pieces of a man to leave behind as much machine as they could. They'd taken his arm, but not his soul? He was their property, now. They could do what they wished.

The Siberian wilderness was a hostile place, but not so much as the silo where they broke him. The beatings, the fighting, the wounds and the darkness. Eventually he snapped - killing all the handlers scientists and guardsmen. They wanted a weapon, he was one. The Colonel had applauded before gassing the room. Their little Soldier had taken in the Russian cold, just as they had wanted. All that was left now was to break his mind and the Project: ASSET would be officially commenced.

The Red Room had been the next place - a beautiful ballet studio in Moscow. The orphan infants were housed in the room above, all girls, and tended to constantly. Below, their older sisters would be dancing. Below them, the oldest sisters would be fighting. All of them taken from homelessness and repurposed. He was the only male there. He would teach them to fight. He would make them strong. He would succeed, or they would fail and forfeit their lives. They called him the Winter Soldier. He would take the strongest into the field, make them bloody and harness the cruelty or else feel it on their own skin. One of those girls, out of the faceless thousands, was to be chosen and given a special title. She had not been born by the time he was reallocated, but that was okay. The Red Room had been christened and his task was complete.

Zola had not been impressed that the Fist was back on American soil, but the nation had changed very much since the last time he'd been here. Pierce wanted him. And Pierce was in charge. So her he was, frozen in a bank vault and at the tender mercies of one of the cruelest men he'd ever met. Under his eye and his hands assassination after assassination began. The path was cleared, the way forward set. All they needed was the other would would maintain him. All of the normal handlers fell, easily broken. They needed a team he could not escape. 

The Asset required more pieces.

 


	2. The Shadow, Our Black Widow

She grew up there. She knew everyone, from the nursemaid to the Oldest Sisters. She watched the generation before her move down, down, gone. 

She knew the pattern. You stayed in the nursery until you were five. Then, you were old enough to dance. You were sent down to the Studio, where they would give you two years to learn basic technique before the violence set in. Then, at age seven, the training set in. You would begin to work, and work hard. Some girls didn't make it. Some girls made it too well. 

She had been one of the excellent, progressing rapidly and brilliantly. She had been what they were looking for.

"If only you had come when he was still here." Her teacher cooed, stroking her placid face. "He would have delighted in you."

Down, down at age twelve into the Soldier's Room. Most were fifteen, but she was good, so very good. Then, and only then, did the breaking begin.

The Soldier wasn't there anymore, but the technique he employed still was. It didn't take a weapon to forge one, just some monsters. 

She completed the training at seventeen, and they were proud. She was their jewel. She was who they had been waiting for. 

"What a lovely spider you would make." Her old teacher murmured, stroking down her hair as she was sent into the operating room. No children could compromise her, and they would ensure that all aspects of all weapons were devoid of exploitations. "A beautiful toxin, weaving all the webs and trapping all the weak ones."

"I don't know if I can do this."

"You go in Natalia Romanov, but you emerge the Black Widow." Her teacher cupped her face. "Girl, history was made for you to write, the anonymous hand guiding the pen."

"I'm not her."

"Then fake it." Desperation tinged her advice. "The light of your next day depends on it."

* * *

Swiftly, she realized the truth of that advice. The Soldier's Room had not been a scare tactic, like she had believed. She was there to kill, to use every weapon she had available to complete her mission. Quick, stealthy, enough to be eyes-catching but not enough to be memorable.

Years would pass this way. Mission after mission after mission.

She was grateful for the distraction. She preferred living that hollow shell of someone else, someone real, instead of sitting on the cot in her room and staring at the pale brown walls, feeling for all the world like she was in a box. The world beyond had been revealed and she wanted in on it, even through deception and violence. It offered her no other way.

Until the hospital fire.

It had been accidental - the wiring was faulty and she didn't know she would overload it. The screaming - oh, the screaming. The children especially. She hadn't meant to. She hadn't. 

That was where Clint found her. 

No damage in a conditioning chamber ever prepared her for the kind of psychological damage that one event had on her. Clint, bless his wonderful soul, decided to help her.

Stalking her trail for months, tabbing her for weeks and ready to kill when she made her escape, and when he found her in tears blocks away from the inferno, he felt bad.

"You're just a kid." He said, lowering the bow. She met his gaze, ready for the judgement. God, let her die. This torment was excruciating. "Dammit."

Her superiors were glad of her entrance to SHIELD, less so about her attachment to Clint.

"This one thing," She said, "allow me this one thing and I will never betray you. Just give him to me."

And, to her everlasting surprise, they did.

But there was still one missing piece.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know this chapter Is shorter than normal for me, but it'll work out, I promise.


End file.
